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Reince Priebus sits down with POLITICO

PHOTOS: Retiring senators

To erase Democrats’ 55-45 advantage, the GOP needs to net six seats. There are seven states now represented by Democrats that Mitt Romney won last year. Republicans need to carry most of them, and retirements in West Virginia and likely South Dakota help.

But they can’t count on running the table in red states. Republicans also must compete in places that Barack Obama just carried, purple states like New Hampshire, Minnesota and Colorado.

Historical patterns favor the GOP. Midterms tend to bring out a higher share of whiter and older (read: Republican) voters. Typically, a reelected president’s party loses seats in the next election. But the GOP starts in a deep hole after a host of bad candidates — Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, to name just two — blew eminently winnable races in 2012.

About a dozen seats are in play, and conventional wisdom at this moment — 20 months out from the election, an eternity in politics — is that Republicans will pick up a handful of seats.

With that in mind, here is POLITICO’s look at four things Republicans must do to retake the Senate for the first time since 2006.

Knock off some red-state Democrats

Democratic incumbents in Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alaska and Montana all have fat targets on their backs, thanks to those states’ GOP tilt. But Republicans have their work cut out.

Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had a free ride in 2008, when Republicans didn’t even nominate a challenger. That won’t happen again. Some Republicans say Pryor’s divorce last fall could become an issue, and the Club for Growth is already running ads attacking him as “Obama’s best ally in Arkansas.” Conservative groups like the club want rising star and freshman GOP Rep. Tom Cotton to run, but Lt. Gov. Mark Darr is also interested and could be formidable.

In North Carolina, the GOP has no clear front-runner against Sen. Kay Hagan, who has a 42 percent approval rating, according to Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. The survey found Lt. Gov. Dan Forest narrowly atop a scattered field of possible candidates. A contested primary to take on Hagan is expected.

In Alaska, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich beat Ted Stevens in 2008 by just a few thousand votes. But Begich, the former mayor of Anchorage, has aggressively positioned himself as an Alaskan first and a Democrat second. Though he voted for Obamacare, he has broken with Democrats on issues important to the oil industry.

Republican Joe Miller, who lost a 2010 race against incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski after a series of bizarre incidents, is laying the groundwork for another bid. But Washington, D.C., Republicans think Gov. Sean Parnell or Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell would be better options.